Ocean Temperature Rise Continues

Ocean Temperature Rise

Of all the excess heat that results from people's emissions, 93.4% goes into oceans. Accordingly, the temperature of oceans has risen substantially.

NOAA analysis shows that the most recent 12-month period, November 2013–October 2014, broke the record (set just last month) for the all-time warmest 12-month period in the 135-year period of record. The global oceans were the warmest on record for October. For January–October, the average global sea surface temperature was also record high.

The danger is that ocean temperatures will continue to rise, especially in the North Atlantic, and that the Gulf Stream will keep carrying ever warmer water from the North Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean, threatening to unleash huge methane eruptions from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor, in turn causing even higher temperatures and more extreme weather events, wildfires, etc.


High Methane Levels

High methane levels were recorded over the Arctic Ocean in October, as discussed in this earlier post, and were sustained in November, as discussed in this post. Methane levels as high as 2717 ppb were recorded on November 16, 2014, p.m, by the MetOp-1 satellite at 469 mb (i.e. 19,820 ft or 6,041 m altitude), as the image below shows.

Methane levels as high as 2549 ppb were recorded on November 19, 2014, p.m, by the MetOp-2 satellite at 586 mb (i.e. 14,385 ft or 4,384 m altitude), as the image below shows.

Above image further confirms earlier indications that these high methane levels do indeed result from large methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.

Greenhouse gas levels in general are very high over the Arctic, as earlier discussed in a recent post and as illustrated by the image below, showing carbon dioxide levels as high as 420 ppm at high latitudes, while the global mean was 403 ppm, on November 19, 2014, p.m., at 945 mb (i.e. 1,916 ft or 584 m altitude).

As said, sustained instances of large abrupt methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean threaten to strongly accelerate warming in the Arctic even further, in turn resulting in ever more methane being released, as illustrated in the image below, from an earlier post.

Self-reinforcing Feedback Loops

Such methane eruptions are part of a number of self-reinforcing feedback loops that can strongly accelerate warming in the Arctic. Above image, from an earlier post, illustrates two such feedbacks, i.e. albedo changes due to snow and ice demise, and methane releases. Further feedbacks are described in this post and this post, and in the image below.

For a discussion of these and further feedbacks, see this page at the Climate Plan blog 

The threat is that such rapid temperature rises will appear at first in hotspots over the Arctic and eventually around the globe, while also resulting in huge temperature swings that could result in depletion of supply of food and fresh water, as further illustrated by the above image, from an earlier post, and the image below, from another earlier post.

[ click on image at original post to enlarge ]

IPCC warnings not strong enough



In above paragraph, the IPCC warns about the risk of methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean further accelerating global warming. While the IPCC does model for a temperature rise that could exceed 12 degrees Celsius in a 'business as usual' scenario (i.e. without action taken), the IPCC does not anticipate that such a rise could occur before the year 2250, as illustrated by the image below.

The situation could be much worse than foreseen by the IPCC, due to a number of reasons, including:

1. The non-linear way feedbacks can hugely increase temperature rises.
2.  The IPCC's underestimation of the amount of methane contained in sediments under the Arctic Ocean and prone to be released as temperatures rise. Shakhova et al. estimate the accumulated methane potential for the Eastern Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) alone as follows:
   - organic carbon in permafrost of about 500 Gt;
   - about 1000 Gt in hydrate deposits; and
   - about 700 Gt in free gas beneath the gas hydrate stability zone.
   Back in 2008, Shakhova et al. considered release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time.
   Furthermore, mantel methane could add to our predicament, as discussed in an earlier post.
3. Back in 2002, Malcolm Light already warned that seismic events could trigger destabilization of methane hydrates. Furthermore, huge temperature swings can combine with pressure swings and storms, and with swings between expansion and contraction of soil and ice, resulting in severe shocks to ecosystems, as described in an earlier post. 
4. The IPCC's ignoring of large methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Oceans and the resulting growth of mean global methane levels at higher altitudes, as discussed in an earlier post.

Steven Sherwood et al. wrote back in 2010 that peak heat stress, quantified by wet bulb temperature, across diverse climates today never exceeds 31 degrees Celsius (see also this update). Some may believe that this doesn't apply to the Arctic and the higher altitudes in mountain regions. However, at the June Solstice the amount of solar radiation received in the Arctic is higher than anywhere else on Earth, An increased occurence and intensity of heatwaves could expose large areas of the Arctic and mountain regions to sustained heatwaves exceeding peak heat stress temperatures. In addition, ocean acidification and oxygen depletion in the Arctic Ocean would make it hard for fish, seals, polar bears and further wildlife to survive. Furthermore, the short growth season combined with a long, cold winter limits vegetation in the Arctic, while ecosystems are also becoming increasingly exposed to wild weather swings and wildfires.


Risk Assessment

When taking above points into acount, an absence of action seems to guarantee human extinction by the year 2050. Little action will be ‘too little, too late’ and will merely delay human extinction by a few years, as illustrated by the graph below.

The graph identifies the years 2030 and 2040 as critical. Beyond the year 2030, the risk that humans will go extrinct grows larger than 1% in the absence of action. By the year 2040, the risk of human extinction will have increased substantially, especially if no action will have been taken, but also if too little action will have been taken up to 2040, while even with the best possible programs put in place by the year 2015, there will be a 2% risk of human extinction by 2040, e.g. due to war over what action to take, or due to political opposition or errors making such programs ineffective or even counter-productive.

In conclusion, it is highly likely that the risk of human extinction already now is intolerably high and rising with every moment passing with little no action taken to reduce the risk. This calls for comprehensive and effective action, as further discussed at the Climate Plan blog.


References

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) WGI Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), Final Draft (7 June 2013), page 168.
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_Chapter02.pdf

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) WGI Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), Final Draft (7 June 2013), Figure 12.5.
http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-12Doc2b_FinalDraft_Chapter12.pdf

- An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress - by Steven C. Sherwood & Matthew Huber
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/04/26/0913352107.full.pdf

- Ocean Temperature Rise - by Sam Carana
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/10/ocean-temperature-rise.html

- Methane release from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf and the Potential for Abrupt Climate Change - by Natalia Shakhova & Igor Semiletov
http://symposium2010.serdp-estcp.org/content/download/8914/107496/version/3/file/1A_Shakhova_Final.pdf

- Anomalies of methane in the atmosphere over the East Siberian shelf: Is there any sign of methane leakage from shallow shelf hydrates? - by Shakhova, Semiletov, Salyuk & Kosmach  http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU2008/01526/EGU2008-A-01526.pdf

- Mantle Methane - by Malcolm Light
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/02/mantle-methane.html

- Evidence linking Arctic amplification to extreme weather in mid-latitudes - by Jennifer A. Francis and S.J. Vavrus, in: Geophysical Research Letters 39 (6):. doi:10.1029/2012GL051000
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL051000/abstract

- Near-Term Human Extinction - by Sam Carana
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/04/near-term-human-extinction.html

- Warm waters threaten to trigger huge methane eruptions from Arctic Ocean seafloor - by Sam Carana
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/08/warm-waters-threaten-to-trigger-huge-methane-releases-from-arctic-ocean-seafloor.html

- How many deaths could result from failure to act on climate change? - by sam Carana
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/05/how-many-deaths-could-result-from-failure-to-act-on-climate-change.html

- Methane linked to Seismic Activity in the Arctic - by Malcolm P. Light & Sam Carana
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/seismic-activity.html

- Wild Weather Swings - by Sam Carana
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/10/wild-weather-swings.html

- Four Hiroshima bombs a second: how we imagine climate change - by Sam Carana
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/08/four-hiroshima-bombs-second-how-we-imagine-climate-change.html

- Polar jet stream appears hugely deformed
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/polar-jet-stream-appears-hugely-deformed.html

- Near-Term Human Extinction
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/04/near-term-human-extinction.html

Post by Sam Carana.

Ocean Temperature Rise

Ocean Temperatures

Of all excess heat resulting from people's emissions, 93.4% goes into oceans. Accordingly, the temperature of oceans has risen substantially.

Globally, the average September ocean temperature marked a record high for that month in 2014, at 0.66°C (1.19°F) above the 20th century average, breaking the previous record that was set just one month earlier. On the Northern Hemisphere, the temperature of the ocean in September 2014 was 0.83 °C (or 1.49 °F) above the 20th century, 

The anomaly was 0.84 °C in August 2014, as illustrated by the image below.

On specific days, anomalies were much higher. On August 19, 2014, the Northern Hemisphere showed a sea surface temperature anomaly of 1.78 °C, while the North Atlantic sea surface temperature was 1.82 °C above average (CFSR 1979-2000 Baseline) on October 16, 2014, as illustrated by the image below.

Sea surface temperature anomalies are at the top end of the scale in many places in the Arctic, as well as off the coast of North America. The danger is that the Gulf Stream will keep carrying ever warmer water from the North Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean, threatening to unleash huge methane eruptions from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor, in turn causing even higher temperatures and more extreme weather events, wildfires, etc.

Above image shows methane levels as high as 2666 ppb, as measured by the MetOp-2 Satellite at 14,385 ft (~4.4 km) altitude on October 26, 2014 am.

Is 2666 ppb as high as it will get?

Sadly, methane releases from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean are becoming increasingly larger around this time of year and they look set to get even larger than this. Note that the amount of methane actually erupting from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean is even larger than what is visible on above image, for the following three reasons.

1. No data were available for some areas, as the IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) instrument measuring methane only covers a certain width. The white shapes showing up on above images are areas where no measurements were taken, resulting from the way the polar-orbiting satellite circum-navigates the globe, as pictured on the image on the right.
   
   Furthermore, quality control failed in the grey areas on above images, indicating reading difficulties due to high moisture levels (i.e. snow, rain or water vapor), as also discussed in an earlier post. Accordingly, high methane levels (above 1950 ppb) as show up in the yellow areas could also be present in the many grey areas over the Arctic Ocean.
   
   When also looking at methane levels on days following the high 2666 ppb reading, methane is persistently present over most of the Arctic Ocean, as illustrated by the above October 29, 2014, combination image, confirming that high methane levels were likely present in areas where no data were available on October 6, 2014.
      
   
2. Much of the methane that is released from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor is broken down by microbes as it rises up in the water. The SWERUS-3 research team recently found methane in the waters of the East Siberian Sea at levels that equate to atmospheric levels of  3188 ppb.
      
   
3. Much methane is broken down in the atmosphere by hydroxyl, as illustrated by the image below, showing carbon dioxde levels on October 27, 2014, that indicate that large amounts of methane are broken down at higher latitudes on the Northern Hemisphere.

The latter point could explain the sudden recent rise in carbon dioxide levels, as also detected at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, as illustrated by the image below.

In conclusion, the amount of methane that is erupting from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean is larger than what is visible on satellite images, and the water will be highly saturated with methane at locations where the methane is escaping from the seafloor, highlighting the danger that, in case of large abrupt releases from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor, microbes and hydroxyl will quickly get depleted locally, resulting in little of the methane being broken down, as discussed at an earlier post.

Why are such huge amounts of methane starting to get released from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor now?  

As the image below shows, temperature at 2 meters was below 0°C (32°F, i.e. the temperature at which water freezes) over most of the Arctic Ocean on October 26, 2014. The Arctic was over 6°F (3.34°C) warmer than average, and at places was up to 20°C (36°F) warmer than average.

Above image illustrates the enormous amount of heat that has until now been transferred from the waters of the Arctic Ocean to the atmosphere. Underneath the surface, water temperatures are much higher than they used to be and, as around this time of year the Arctic Ocean freezes over, less heat will from now on be able to escape to the atmosphere. Sealed off from the atmosphere by sea ice, greater mixing of heat in the water will occur down to the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.

As land around the Arctic Ocean freezes over, less fresh water will flow from rivers into the Arctic Ocean. As a result, the salt content of the Arctic Ocean increases, making it easier for ice in cracks and passages in sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean to melt, allowing methane contained in the sediment to escape. Furthermore, the sea ice makes that less moisture evaporates from the water, which together with the change of seasons results in lower hydroxyl levels at the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, in turn resulting in less methane being broken down in the atmosphere over the Arctic.

This situation will continue for months to come. Salty and warm water (i.e. warmer than water that is present in the Arctic Ocean) will continue to be carried by the Gulf Stream into the Arctic Ocean, while less heat and moisture will be able to be transferred to the atmosphere.

In conclusion, high methane levels threaten to further accelerate warming in the Arctic, in a vicious cycle escalating into runaway warming and resulting in death, destruction and extinction at massive scale.

So, what can be done to reduce the risk?

Climate Plan

- Emission Cuts

It is imperative that large emissions cuts are made quickly. The Climate Plan calls for 80% emission cuts by 2020, as one of multiple lines of action that need to be implemented in parallel.

- Greenhouse Gas Removal and Storage

The IPCC points at the need for carbon dioxide removal and also warns about ocean warming continuing for centuries (text below).

Indeed, even if all emissions by people could somehow be brought to an abrupt end, this alone will not stop the rise of ocean temperatures, at least not for a long time. For starters, air temperatures would start rising within days, in response to the disappearance of aerosols that now mask the full wrath of global warming. Furthermore, such a temperature rise would further accelerate feedbacks such as snow and ice decline, methane hydrate destabilization, etc., in turn feeding further temperature rises.

The Climate Plan therefore calls for carbon dioxide removal, as well as for active removal of other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, and for further lines of action.

- Further Action

Again, merely implementing the above lines of action will not suffice to quickly bring down ocean temperatures. Paleo-climate records show that falls in temperature go hand in hand with falls of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to levels under 280 ppm, as opposed to current carbon dioxide levels that are around 400 ppm.

Raising Funding for Further Action

The Climate Plan calls for comprehensive and effective action that includes additional lines of action. Such additional action will require U.N. supervision, which may make it hard for the necessary action to obtain sufficient funding.

In earlier posts, it was suggested that, besides having fees imposed on facilities that burn fossil fuel and on sales of fossil fuel itself, additional fees could be imposed on commercial international flights. As long as it seems too hard to substantially reduce emissions associated with such flights, it seems appropriate to explore further ways to minimize such flights, e.g. by imposing additional fees that could help fund further action.

There are a number of ways such fees could be implemented. Such fees could be calculated based on the distance traveled or as a percentage of the fare.

Fees could also be calculated on the basis of the traveler's flying history, e.g. in the form of frequent flyer fees. Such fees could be collected either by the respective airline or airport.

In the box on the right, Ekta Kalra gives further details about how the latter idea could be implemented.

What do you think?


References and related posts

- Four Hiroshima bombs a second: how we imagine climate change
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/08/four-hiroshima-bombs-second-how-we-imagine-climate-change.html

- Arctic Methane Release and Rapid Temperature Rise are interlinked
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/11/arctic-methane-release-and-rapid-temperature-rise-are-interlinked.html

- Climate Change Accelerating
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/10/climate-change-accelerating.html

- NOAA, Global Analysis - September 2014
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/9

- NOAA Ocean temperature anomalies
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series

- Methane Hydrates
http://methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/2013/04/methane-hydrates.html

- Climate Plan
http://climateplan.blogspot.com

Post by Sam Carana.

Methane levels threaten to skyrocket

The World Meteorological Organization’s annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin shows that between 1990 and 2013 there was a 34% increase in radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – because of long-lived greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide.

In 2013, concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was 142% of the pre-industrial era (1750), and of methane and nitrous oxide 253% and 121% respectively.

The ocean cushions the increase in CO2 that would otherwise occur in the atmosphere, but with far-reaching impacts. The current rate of ocean acidification appears unprecedented at least over the last 300 million years, according to an analysis in the report.

“We know without any doubt that our climate is changing and our weather is becoming more extreme due to human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.

“The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin shows that, far from falling, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere actually increased last year at the fastest rate for nearly 30 years. We must reverse this trend by cutting emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases across the board,” he said. “We are running out of time.”

The observations from WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch network showed that CO2 levels increased more between 2012 and 2013 than during any other year since 1984.

NOAA data give a slightly lower CO2 growth figure for 2013, but even when extrapolating NOAA's data, some frightening trendlines appear, as illustrated by above image. 

The WMO concludes that a reduction in RF (radiative forcing) from its current level (2.92 W·m^–2 in 2013) will require huge cuts in a number of emissions, not just in CO2. 

In the figure on the right, the RF of the long-lived greenhouse gases (LLGHG) is plotted along with different emission reduction scenarios: (a) emissions held constant at 2013 levels, (b) constant CO2 emissions and 80% reduction in anthropogenic non-CO2 GHG emissions, (c) 80% reduction in CO2 emissions while non-CO2 GHG emissions are held constant, and (d) 80% reductions in all LLGHG emissions.



A recent study shows that the world not only continues to build new coal-fired power plants, but built more new coal plants in the past decade than in any previous decade. Worldwide, an average of 89 gigawatts per year (GW yr^–1) of new coal generating capacity was added between 2010 and 2012, 23 GW yr^–1 more than in the 2000–2009 time period and 56 GW yr^–1 more than in the 1990–1999 time period. Natural gas plants show a similar pattern.


Assuming these plants operate for 40 years, the fossil-fuel burning plants built in 2012 will emit approximately 19 billion tons of CO2 (Gt CO2) over their lifetimes, versus 14 Gt CO2 actually emitted by all operating fossil fuel power plants in 2012.

The study concludes that total committed emissions related to the power sector are growing at a rate of about 4% per year.

“Bringing down carbon emissions means retiring more fossil fuel-burning facilities than we build,” said Steven Davis, assistant professor of Earth system science at UCI and the study’s lead author. “But worldwide, we’ve built more coal-burning power plants in the past decade than in any previous decade, and closures of old plants aren’t keeping pace with this expansion.”

“Far from solving the climate change problem, we’re investing heavily in technologies that make the problem worse,” he added.

“We’ve been hiding what’s going on from ourselves: A high-carbon future is being locked in by the world’s capital investments,” said Socolow, professor emeritus of mechanical & aerospace engineering.

The IPCC in AR5 suggests there was a carbon budget to divide between nations (above image left), while largely ignoring potentially huge feedbacks such as albedo changes resulting from decline of snow and ice in the Arctic and methane eruptions from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.

These two feedbacks alone could each soon cause more warming than the warming directly caused by people's emissions since the start of the industrial revolution.

Sam Carana says: “There is no carbon budget to divide between nations, instead there is just a huge debt of CO2 to be removed from the atmosphere and the oceans. Comprehensive and effective action must be taken to stop run-away warming.”

Sam Carana continues: “No time before in human history has such a huge amount of ocean heat accumulated in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific.”

“This heat is now threatening to invade the Arctic Ocean and trigger huge temperature rises due to methane eruptions from the seafloor.”

“The heat is also melting Arctic sea ice from below, as the image below right shows, there now is hardly any sea ice left that is more than 3 meters (nearly 10 ft) thick.”

“Last year, this heat started to cause large methane eruptions from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor in early October, and this year temperatures in the Arctic Ocean are even higher.”

Meanwhile, mean global methane levels of 1839 ppb were recorded at several altitudes by the MetOp-1 satellite on the morning of September 7, 2014.

And ocean heat continues to invade the Arctic, as illustrated by the NOAA image below.

References

- Record Greenhouse Gas Levels Impact Atmosphere and Oceans - WMO Press Release No. 1002
https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_1002_en.html

- WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin No. 10 | 9 September 2014
https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/documents/1002_GHG_Bulletin.pdf

- NOAA Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, Annual Mean Global CO2 Growth Rates
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html#global_growth

- Commitment accounting of CO2 emissions, by Steven J Davis and Robert H Socolow
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/8/084018

- Existing power plants will spew 300 billion more tons of carbon dioxide during use - News Release
http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/existing-power-plants-will-spew-300-billion-more-tons-of-carbon-dioxide-during-use

Post by Sam Carana.

Antarctica linked to Arctic

Waters in the Arctic Ocean continue to warm up. Very warm waters from the North Atlantic and Pacific Ocean are invading the Arctic Ocean.

Waters in the North Atlantic and in the North Pacific are very warm, due to a number of reasons.

What is happening in the oceans is very important in this respect. As discussed in earlier posts, most of the extra heat caused by people's emissions goes into the oceans.

The great ocean conveyor belt (Thermohaline Circulation), brings warm water from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere.

The Gulf Stream is the North Atlantic leg of the great ocean conveyor belt, and it brings dense, salty water from the North Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean.

Saltier water is denser than fresher water because the dissolved salts fill interstices between water molecules, resulting in more mass per unit volume.

Very dense ocean water can be found in the North Atlantic because the North Atlantic has high salinity, due to high evaporation rates, while salty water is also coming from the Mediterranean Sea.

As also discussed in an earlier post, this dense, saltier water sinks in the North Atlantic, accumulating in deeper water.

By contrast, much of the Arctic Ocean has low salinity, due to ice melt and river runoff.  As it enters the Arctic Ocean, the warm and dense water from the Atlantic thus dives under the under the sea ice and under the less salty surface water in the Arctic Ocean.

In conclusion, much of the heat resulting from people's emissions accumulates in the North Atlantic and also ends up in the Arctic. This partly explains why surface temperatures are rising much faster at the poles, as illustrated by the NOAA image below.

There are further reasons why surface air temperatures elsewhere (other than at the poles) are rising less rapidly than they did, say, a decade ago. As also discussed by Andrew Glikson in the post No Planet B, the increased amounts of sulphur emitted by the growing number of coal-fired power plants and by the burning of bunker fuel on sea is (temporarily) masking the full wrath of global warming.

Another reason is the growth of the sea ice around Antarctica, as illustrated by the CryosphereToday image on the left.

Melting takes place both in the Arctic and on Antarctica, but more so in the Arctic. Recent research of CryoSat-2 data reveals that Greenland alone is now losing about 375 cubic kilometers of ice annually, while in Antarctica the annual volume loss now is about 125 cubic kilometers.

Currents also distribute ocean heat in ways that make the Arctic warm up more than twice as rapidly as the Antarctic. In a recent paper, John Marshall et al. further suggest that ozone depletion also contributes to this.

All this makes that, while the jet streams on the northern hemisphere are circumnavigating the globe at a slower pace, jet streams on the southern hemisphere are getting stronger, making it more difficult for warm air to enter the atmosphere over Antarctica, while the stronger winds also speed up sea currents on the southern hemisphere. This makes the sea ice around Antarctica grow, and as the sea ice spreads further away from Antarctica, temperatures of surface waters around Antarctica are falling.

Growth of the sea ice around Antarctica makes that more sunlight is reflected back into space. There now is some 1.5 million square kilometers more sea ice around Antarctica than there used to be. The albedo change associated with sea ice growth on the southern hemisphere can be estimated at 1.7 W/sq m, i.e. more than the total RF of all CO2 emission caused by people from 1750 to 2011 (IPCC AR5).

The rapid growth of sea ice on the southern hemisphere alone goes a long way to explain why, over the past three months, surface air temperatures have not been much higher than they used to be, both globally and in the Arctic, as illustrated by above NOAA image. What has also contributed to warmer temperatures around latitude 60 on the northern hemisphere is the fact that methane has accumulated in the atmosphere at that latitude, as discussed in earlier posts.

Arctic SST far exceed anything ever seen in human history

So, does the sea ice on the southern hemisphere constitute a negative feedback that could hold back global warming? It doesn't.

It may temporarily keep surface temperatures close to what they used to be, as the sea ice reflects lots of sunlight back into space, but at the same time ocean temperatures are rising strongly, as the sea ice also prevents heat from radiating out of the waters around Antarctica.

The latter also helps explaining the colder surface temperatures over those waters.

Much of this additional ocean heat has meanwhile been transported by the great ocean conveyor belt to the northern hemisphere.

No time before in human history has such a huge amount of ocean heat accumulated in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. This heat is now threatening to invade the Arctic Ocean and trigger huge temperature rises due to methane eruptions from the seafloor.

The situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as dicussed at the Climate Plan blog.

State Of Extreme Emergency

by Malcolm Light

PRESIDENT OBAMA MUST DECLARE A STATE OF EXTREME NATIONAL EMERGENCY AND CEASE ORCHESTRATING A WAR WITH RUSSIA. HE MUST RECALL HIS ENTIRE ARMY AND NAVY PERSONNEL TO THE UNITED STATES TO BEGIN A MASSIVE CONVERSION OF THE US ENERGY SYSTEM TO SOLAR AND WIND POWER. THIS CONVERSION MUST RESULT IN ALL 600 COAL POWER STATIONS AND NUCLEAR STATIONS BEING COMPLETELY SHUT DOWN IN THE NEXT 5 TO 10 YEARS. ALL SURFACE TRANSPORT BOTH PRIVATE AND PUBLIC MUST BE ENTIRELY ELECTRIFIED AND AIR TRANSPORT CONVERTED TO METHANE OR HYDROGEN FUEL. IF THIS IS NOT DONE, HUMANITY WILL BE FACING TOTAL EXTINCTION IN AN ARCTIC METHANE FIRESTORM BETWEEN 2040 AND 2050.

The US and Canada must cut their global emissions of carbon dioxide by 90% in the next 10 to 15 years, otherwise they will be become an instrument of mass destruction of the Earth and its entire human population. Recovery of the United States economy from the financial crisis has been very unsoundly based by the present Administration on an extremely hazardous "all of the above" energy policy that has allowed continent wide gas fracking, coal and oil sand oil mining and the return of widespread drilling to the Gulf. Coast. This large amount of fossil fuel has to be transported and sold which has caused extensive spills, explosions and confrontations with US citizens over fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline. Gas fracking is in the process of destroying the entire aquifer systems of the United States and causing widespread earthquakes. The oil spills are doing the same to the surface river run off.

We are now facing a devastating final show down with Mother Nature, which is being massively accelerated by the filthy extraction of fossil fuels by US and Canada by gas fracking, coal and tar sand mining and continent wide bitumen transport. The United States and other developed nations made a fatal mistake by refusing to sign the original Kyoto protocols. The United States and Canada must now cease all their fossil fuel extraction and go entirely onto renewable energy in the next 10 to 15 years otherwise they will be guilty of planetary ecocide - genocide by the 2050's.

The volume transport of the Gulf Stream has increased by three times since the 1940's due to the rising atmospheric pressure difference set up between the polluted, greenhouse gas rich air above North America and the marine Atlantic Air. The increasingly heated Gulf Stream with its associated high winds and energy rich weather systems then flows NE to Europe where it recently pummeled Great Britain with catastrophic storms. Other branches of the Gulf Stream then enter the Arctic and disassociate the subsea Arctic methane hydrate seals on subsea and deep high - pressure mantle methane reservoirs below the Eurasian Basin- Laptev Sea transition. This is releasing increasing amounts of methane into the atmosphere producing anomalous temperatures, greater than 20°C above average. Over very short time periods of a few days to a few months the atmospheric methane has a global warming potential from 1000 to 100 times that of carbon dioxide.

There are such massive reserves of methane in the subsea Arctic methane hydrates, that if only a few percent of them are disassociated, they will lead to a jump in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere by 10°C and produce a "Permian" style major extinction event which will kill us all. The whole northern hemisphere is now covered by a thickening atmospheric methane global warming veil that is spreading southwards at about 1 km a day and it already totally envelopes the United States. A giant hole in the equatorial ozone layer has also been discovered in the west Pacific which acts like an elevator transferring methane from lower altitudes to the stratosphere where it already forms a dense equatorial global warming stratospheric band that is spreading into the Polar regions.

During the last winter, the high Arctic winter temperatures and pressures have displaced the normal freezing Arctic Air south into Canada and the United States producing never before seen, freezing winter storms and massive power failures. When the Arctic ice cap finally melts towards the end of next year, the Arctic sea will be aggressively heated by the sun and the Gulf Stream. The cold Arctic air will then be confined to the Greenland Ice cap and the hot globally warmed Arctic air with its methane will flow south to the United States to further heat up the Gulf Stream, setting up an anticlockwise circulation around Greenland. Under these circumstances Great Britain and Europe must expect even more catastrophic storm systems, hurricane force winds and massive flooding after the end of next year due to a further acceleration in the energy transport of the Gulf Stream. If this process continues unchecked the mean temperature of the atmosphere will rise a further 8° centigrade and we will be facing global deglaciation, a more than 200 feet rise in sea level rise and a major terminal extinction event by the 2050's.

Post by Zaven Ohannessian.

Warming waters threaten to trigger methane eruptions from Arctic Ocean seafloor

K. Tung / Univ. of Washington. (Top) Global

average surface temperatures, where black dots

are yearly averages. Two flat periods (hiatus)

are separated by rapid warming from 1976-1999.

(Middle) Observations of heat content, compared

to the average, in the north Atlantic Ocean.

(Bottom) Salinity of the seawater in the same

part of the Atlantic. Higher salinity is seen

to coincide with more ocean heat storage.

A new study looks at how, in the 21st century, surface warming slowed as more heat moved deeper into the oceans, specifically the North Atlantic.

Sun-warmed salty water travels north along ocean currents in the Atlantic. When this saltier water reaches the North Atlantic, its greater density causes it to sink. From about 1999, this current began to speed up and draw heat deeper into the ocean.

These huge amounts of heat moving deeper into the Atlantic Ocean are very worrying.

The image below shows that sea surface temperatures have reached extremely high levels on the Northern Hemisphere, where sea surface temperature anomalies as high as 1.78 degrees Celsius were recorded on August 19, 2014.

As discussed in an earlier post, water carried by the Gulf Stream below the surface can be even warmer than surface waters. As the post discusses, high sea surface temperatures west of Svalbard indicate that the Gulf Stream can carry very warm water (warmer than 16°C) at greater depths and is pushing this underneath the sea ice north of Svalbard. Similarly, warm water from greater depth comes to the surface where the Gulf Stream pushes it against the west coast of Novaya Zemlya.

Very warm water is now invading the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait from the Pacific Ocean, while very warm water is also traveling on the back of the Gulf Stream from the North Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean.

The danger is that this warm water will destabilize hydrates contained in sediments under the Arctic Ocean and trigger huge methane eruptions.

Rising methane levels over the past few years are ominous in this respect. The image below shows very high mean global methane levels on August 28, 2014, while methane readings as high as 2561 ppb were recorded on that day.

Methane Levels -  see earlier post for a discussion of IPCC/NOAA data

In conclusion, the situation is dire and calls for comprehensive and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog.



References and Related Links

- Varying planetary heat sink led to global-warming slowdown and acceleration
by Xianyao Chen and Ka-Kit Tung.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6199/897

- Cause of global warming hiatus found deep in the Atlantic Ocean
University of Washington News Release
http://www.washington.edu/news/2014/08/21/cause-of-global-warming-hiatus-found-deep-in-the-atlantic-ocean

- Horrific Methane Eruptions in East Siberian Sea
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/08/horrific-methane-eruptions-in-east-siberian-sea.html

- Methane Buildup in the Atmosphere
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/04/methane-buildup-in-atmosphere.html

- Climate Plan blog
http://climateplan.blogspot.com

Post by Sam Carana.

Very warm waters are invading the Arctic Ocean

Global mean methane levels as high as 1836 parts per billion were recorded at several altitudes on August 24, 2014. Meanwhile, the Arctic Ocean continues to warm up. As the image below shows, the ocean heat is felt strongly on the Northern Hemisphere.

Very warm waters from the North Pacific and the North Atlantic Oceans are now invading the Arctic Ocean. Never before in human history have these waters been this warm. In the Arctic Ocean, this is causing very high sea surface temperatures, as shown on the image below.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

The very high temperatures threaten to trigger all kinds of feedbacks, as described in the image below.

Feedbacks in the Arctic

The big danger is that, as the seabed warms up, methane will erupt from hydrates in sediments under the Arctic Ocean. The situation is dire and calls for comprehensiev and effective action, as discussed at the Climate Plan blog.

Post by Sam Carana.